| "Pour aller à Lorient pêcher des sardines, |
| Pour aller à Lorient pêcher des harengs—" |
"Monsieur!" exclaimed Madame Barbançon, interrupting her employer, with a highly incensed and prudish air, for she knew the end of the ditty, "you forget there are ladies present."
"Is that so?" demanded the veteran, straining his neck to see outside of the arbour.
"There is no need to make such an effort as that, it seems to me," remarked the housekeeper, with great dignity. "You can see me easy enough, I should think."
"That is true, Mother Barbançon. I always forget that you belong to the other sex, but for all that I like my song much better than I do yours. It was a great favourite on the Armide, the frigate on which I shipped when I was only fourteen, and afterwards we sang it many a time on dry land when I was in the Marine Corps. Oh, those were happy days! I was young then."
"Yes, and then Bû-û-onaparte"—it is absolutely necessary to spell and accent the word in this way, to give the reader any idea of the disdainful and sneering manner in which Mother Barbançon uttered the name of the great man who had been the cause of her brave soldier boy's death—"Bû-û-onaparte was your leader."
"Yes, the Emperor, that 'Corsican ogre,' the Emperor you revile so, wasn't far off, I admit."
"Yes, monsieur, your Emperor was an ogre, and worse than an ogre."
"What! worse than an ogre?"
"Yes, yes, laugh as much as you like, but he was. Do you know, monsieur, that when that Corsican ogre had the Pope in his power at Fontainebleau, do you know how grossly he insulted our Holy Father, your beast of a Bû-û-onaparte?"